One of the biggest challenges in growing a successful business is anticipating the future. This survey of the most popular game developers in 1986 gives some insight into why Sierra would later become one of the biggest game developers in the business. System standardization was far from a sure thing in 1986 and Apple, Atari, Amiga, IBM and Commodore were all vying for survival. In addition to having the third highest number of products in development, Sierra was putting their eggs in the IBM basket earlier than the other developers. As is pointed out in the footnotes, some of this was due to a strong relationship with Radio Shack and Tandy but there is no doubt that being in the right place at the right time and making the right development calls early on helped Sierra remain while companies like SSI, Sublogic and Broderbund would later fall to the competitive pressure in the early computer game industry.
